The sighting of suspected fireball-like phenomenon, reportedly accompanied with booming sound in some cases, triggered panic across the city and its suburbs on Friday night.

As news spread like wildfire, people came out of their homes in droves in many places with their eyes cast towards the sky. Similar sightings were reported from many parts of the city such as Vyttila, Kakkanad, Vypeen, Palarivattom, and Kathrikkadavu and even from suburbs such as Paravur, Kizhakkambalam, Mazhuvannoor, Kolancherry and Fort Kochi.

Aneesha and Sumesh who were at a restaurant at Fort Kochi claimed to have sighted a lit-up sky reminiscent of fireworks at around 10 p.m. “The sky soon turned blue as it happens just before rain. We felt as if it happened very close to us. But we didn’t feel any tremors or hear any loud sound,” they told The Hindu .

Fire units were dispatched from the Gandhi Nagar unit following panic-stricken calls from residents at Vyttila. “However, our officials could not trace any visible evidence of a drop of fireball to the earth,” Fire Divisional Officer R. Prasad told The Hindu .

State Disaster Management Authority member Sekhar L. Kuriakose ruled out the possibility of an earthquake. “If at all it was a tremor, its magnitude must have been less than 3 in the Richter scale that renders it insignificant. Since we are receiving a lot of calls claiming to have seen a fireball accompanied by sonic sound, it could probably be a meteor blast midair during its descent to the earth,” he told The Hindu . Prof. Joe Jacob, faculty member, Department of Physics, Newman College, Thodupuzha, also pointed towards the involvement of meteor. “However, that conclusion is purely going by the witness accounts and cannot be scientifically confirmed,” he said.

The fireball appeared with a noise in many parts of Kerala, including Ernakulam, Thrissur, Palakkad, Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Kozhikode,Many Theories as Fireballs Light Up Kerala SkyKerala, often referred to as Keralam, is a state in the south-west region of India on the Malabar coast.

There is not much point sending out signals to search for alien life because if they are advanced enough, they will have been watching Earth for thousands of years - being able to see bonfires set by the ancient Egyptians, for example.

Frank Drake, the pioneer and founder of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), said he is against sending out signals to find alien life because it makes no sense.

Astronomer Drake conducted the first modern search for extraterrestrial life in the 1960s. He was also behind the Drake Equation – an experiment that quantifies the number of alien civilisations in the Milky Way based on probability.

In an interview with Space.com, the 84-year-old was asked about his thoughts on sending out signals to try to make contact with otherworldly civilisations. Currently, Seti astronomers listen out for radio signals rather than actively sending them to parts of the galaxy where habitable planets could be.

A debate is going on about whether we should do this – the ethical implications are wide-ranging. Some critics say we may end up coming across extraterrestrials intent on doing us harm and that it should not for a privileged few to decide.

However, Drake says the argument is essentially null and void: "There is controversy. I'm very against sending, by the way. I think it's crazy because we're sending all the time. We have a huge leak rate. It has been going on for years.

"There is benefit in eavesdropping, and you would have learned everything you can learn through successful Seti searches. There's all kinds of reasons why sending makes no sense.

"That reminds me of something else. We have learned, in fact, that gravitational lensing works. If they [aliens] use their star as a gravitational lens, they get this free, gigantic, super-Arecibo free of charge. They are not only picking up our radio signals, but they have been seeing the bonfires of the ancient Egyptians. They can probably tell us more about ourselves than we know... they've been watching all these years."

Drake also said the search for alien life is being hampered by a lack of funding. Speaking about their current efforts, he said they are searching for bursts of optical life possibly sent out by extraterrestrial civilisations. Seti will have a new instrument to perform this search in March.

"The whole thing is designed to look for laser flashes. The assumption is — and this is where it gets to be tenuous — the extraterrestrials are doing us a favour," he said. "It does depend on extraterrestrials helping you by targeting you. These stellar beams are so narrow that you've got to know the geometry of the solar system that you're pointing it at.

"They want to communicate. They have to be intent on an intentional signal specifically aimed at us. That's a big order. So there are required actions on the part of the extraterrestrials for this to work. The big plus is that it's cheap and relatively easy to do."

Space agencies across the globe are searching for planets located in habitable zones – where they are located far away enough from and close enough to for liquid water to exist.

Earlier in 2015, researchers came across five planets potentially located in the "Goldilocks" zone that were almost as old as the universe. This means any life that had evolved there would not be extremely advanced.

Tiago Campante, from the University of Birmingham's School of Physics and Astronomy, toldIBTimes UK: "Imagine there are civilisations out there with a head start of five billion years. The human race has been here for 50,000 years. It's a huge difference.

"There's an analogy. It's like you have some ants living by the side of the road and humans are building a highway next to them. How can you explain to those ants what that highway means? You cannot. We could be those ants and there could be advanced civilisations living just next to us, but we cannot detect them and cannot not understand their ways. We don't have the means or intellect."

Unidentified submerged objects (USOs) are not as famous as UFOs although they are often encountered, according to declassified Russian Navy records. The common trait of all USO phenomena is that they involve unexplained and technologically advanced objects, far superior to anything we’ve ever built.

One of the most interesting cases he examined involved a nuclear submarine on a combat mission in the Southern Pacific. During the routine operation, the submarine detected six unknown objects travelling in formation at speeds in excess of 230 knots (265+ mph). In comparison, the fastest submarine was the Soviet K-222, which reached about 44 knots (51 mph).

The submarine’s sonar determined the objects were heading straight for it so the captain gave the order to surface. The USOs followed them to the surface then flew away. Similar instances have been reported in the region of the Bermuda Triangle, as retired submarine commander Yuri Beketov recalls. On-board instruments often malfunctioned, indicating the presence of strong interference. Many believe this is a clear sign of USO/UFO presence.

"On several occasions the instruments gave reading of material objects moving at incredible speed. Calculations showed speeds of about 230 knots, or 265 mph. Speeding so fast is a challenge even on the surface. But water resistance is much higher. It was like the objects defied the laws of physics. There’s only one explanation: the creatures who built them far surpass us in development," said Beketov.

Both UFOs and USOs seem to concentrate wherever military operations occur, indicating their interest in humanity’s military arsenal.

Another USO hotspot is Lake Baikal in Russia. The world’s deepest freshwater lake has always had a certain mysterious nature and fishermen tell tales of lights being spotted in its deep waters. Multiple folk tales describe swimmers being dragged down by creatures lurking beneath Baikal’s calm waves.

Another of the Russian documents described the encounter between a group of military divers and several humanoid beings in silver suits. The divers were training in Lake Baikal at a depth of 150 feet (50 meters) when they came upon a group of unknown creatures. The divers went deeper in the pursuit of the humanoids. Three men were killed, while the other four were severely injured.

Vladimir Azhazha believes the issue should be thoroughly investigated.

“I think about underwater bases and say: why not? Nothing should be discarded,” says Azhazha. “Skepticism is the easiest way: believe nothing, do nothing. People rarely visit great depths. So it’s very important to analyze what they encounter there.”

Each year at the International UFO Congress Open Minds presents UFO researcher awards. This year the researcher of the year winner was a UFO witness, John Burroughs. Watch the video to find out about Burroughs important research, and to see his acceptance speech.

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